Malicious Office (OOXML) / .XLSM — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 4d1f1322b1f81a30…

MALICIOUS

Office (OOXML) / .XLSM

576.1 KB Created: 2013-08-30 14:29:57 UTC Authoring application: Microsoft Excel 16.0300 First seen: 2026-06-04T14:00:00+00:00
MD5: 2d658f5faa429aad9134d4364a658f20 SHA-1: f8c8efe101635ed66c31bed2a575a162fd87822f SHA-256: 4d1f1322b1f81a3071dcbc82ad89f648def2cbd77bd78368be2545e0660901f2
390 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic T1566.001 Spearphishing Attachment T1059 Command and Scripting Interpreter T1204.002 Malicious File

The sample is an XLSM file containing a Workbook_Open macro that uses WScript.Shell and CreateObject to execute obfuscated code. The document body provides instructions to enable macros, a common lure. The Workbook_Open macro likely downloads and executes a second-stage payload from the embedded URL.

Heuristics 11

  • Shell() call in VBA critical OLE_VBA_SHELL
    Shell() call in VBA
  • WScript.Shell usage critical OLE_VBA_WSCRIPT
    WScript.Shell usage
  • Obfuscated auto-exec VBA loader critical OLE_VBA_OBFUSCATED_AUTOEXEC_LOADER
    Auto-exec VBA reconstructs strings with a heavy custom decoder (numeric char-array, repeated hex-string decode, or junk-token Replace removal) and feeds them to a COM-instantiation or execution sink. This obfuscated-loader shape keeps CreateObject/Shell/URL indicators out of the macro source.
  • Workbook_Open macro high OLE_VBA_WBOPEN
    Workbook_Open macro
  • CreateObject call high OLE_VBA_CREATEOBJ
    CreateObject call
  • GetObject call high OLE_VBA_GETOBJ
    GetObject call
  • VBA p-code auto-exec with execution tokens high OLE_VBA_PCODE_AUTOEXEC_EXEC
    Compiled VBA/cache stream contains an auto-execution token together with shell/download/object-execution tokens. This catches p-code-only or source-extraction-failure macro documents where visible source is unavailable.
  • VBA project inside OOXML medium OOXML_VBA
    Document contains a VBA project — VBA macros present
  • Macro/content-enable lure medium SE_ENABLE_LURE
    Document instructs the user to enable macros or editing — a common technique used by malware droppers to bypass Office macro security settings
  • Hidden worksheet (hidden, veryHidden) low OOXML_HIDDEN_SHEET
    Excel workbook contains 9 hidden sheet(s) — hidden sheets are commonly used to conceal macro code, staging data, or intermediate payload construction
  • Embedded URL info EMBEDDED_URL
    One or more URLs were extracted from the document. The URL itself is not a detection — see the per-URL labels for which channel (macro, JS, link annotation, document body, ...) reached each URL.
    URL http://www.frez.co.uk

Extracted artifacts 2

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
macros.bas
08f496abbc3ee237de52fd6223ce462233d5a79912f61b5ed24ffe6415251dde
vba-macro oletools.olevba.extract_macros (decoded VBA source from OOXML) 625763 bytes
vbaProject_00.bin
537428bf739cfc2788faac9dceb42f06edbe4776010c5a75126a44660b92524c
vba-project OOXML VBA project: xl/vbaProject.bin 1230336 bytes